Secrets Kept
by Rosa Cotton
Summary: Once he had consumed the lore of the merpeople, but duties of the kingdom had abated his appetite. Now a casual exchange livens a six year old memory.


Disclaimer: _The Little Mermaid_, all characters, places, and related terms belong to Hans Christian Andersen and Walt Disney Pictures.

Author's Note: In celebration of the 2-disc special edition of The Little Mermaid now in stores, here is a little ficlet. Contains spoilers for the cute and smashes-cannon-into-smithereens book _Ariel's Secret_.

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Secrets Kept

"Merpeople! Eric, pay no attention to this nautical nonsense," Grimsby advises. _Sailors and their wild fish stories_, he thinks with a shake of his head.

Eric cannot hide a small smile as he listens to the argument that develops between his adviser and one of the sailors regarding what is – or not – in the deep fathoms below.

_King Triton_. He moves away from the banter to the rail, trailed by Max. Eric tilts his head back, allowing the wind to blow his black hair about, and smells the salt in the air.

The books he had studied in the huge library of the castle had never provided a name for the sea king. Some had claimed the merpeople were ruled by the same king since the dawn of time. Others believed that the merpeople died, just like mortals, and had been governed by many sea kings.

Resting his arms on the wood, Eric gazes down at the sea, dotted with foam. He strains to see down into the deep water; only green and occasional shadows of large fish are all he can make out. The sea will not give up its secrets willingly.

His tutors had thought it very particular when he suddenly announced he wished to study myths and legends as part of his studies one day. To their knowledge he had not been interested in such stories since he had been taken out of the nursery. He was then thirteen, when it was thought it was time for him to begin learning the ways of ruling the kingdom.

Yet in the end he was allowed to have his way, and he took to the new subject with great eagerness. He could not conceal the fact that of all the myths and legends, he was most interested in the ones dealing with the creatures that lived under the sea, half human and half fish: the merpeople. This caused his tutors' eyebrows to rise, but his teachers made no comment, for he was a willing learner and good student.

For three years Eric studied all he could find about the merpeople. He poured carefully over accounts that had been passed down through generations about sightings of mermaids. He read about their long tails, like those of fish and of various colors of the rainbow, and their voices, like the sweet nightingale when they sang. And there were the tales of mermen who had come onto land and had married humans; myth or truth, who could say?

Nearly every day when it was late afternoon and his studies were over, the prince would go down to the beach. Followed by Max, Eric would play his flute, walking along the sandy shore for hours, peering over the glassy, sparkling surface of the sea. Searching. But each day he returned inside, having failed in his search. One of his tutors ventured to ask why he spent so much time on the beach now. Eric simply shrugged. The memory began to fade, but he had promised.

During his sixteenth year, unexpectedly the king, his father, died. Eric was deeply grieved, for his mother had passed away when he was very young. He turned his attention from his studies to matters concerning the kingdom. He was now the ruler, though he would not be crowned king until he turned twenty.

His memory and interest in the merpeople dimmed as he met with advisers, considered raising taxes, paid his respect to other royal heads of state, and was increasingly pressed to marry. Sometimes late at night he would go to the library and look over one of the books concerning merpeople he had studied. He now doubted he would ever see her again.

Now he has just turned nineteen. And the sailors' talk about mermaids brings a wave of recollections and blurry memories to him. As Eric pats Max's head, a single, sure remembrance pierces through his uncertainties. The little mermaid he saw six years ago had the brightest red hair. And he remembers it, for since then he has not seen any other maiden with hair like that. He promised to keep her secret…

THE END


End file.
